


Memories

by waterbird13



Series: Tumblr Fics [239]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Memory Erasure, Past Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, after their memories were erased, dean negative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 01:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8184629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbird13/pseuds/waterbird13
Summary: Lisa can't decide what's so unsettling about her life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece from Tumblr.
> 
> It focuses on Lisa and Ben and is Dean negative--his memory erasing trick is gross.

She’s in the hospital for a several days after the car accident. She’s grateful the guy came and apologized, really she is, and it goes a long way to mitigating her anger and frustration, but it doesn’t erase it. Ben’s been living out of the hospital room.

Officially, his grandmother is staying with him, but Lisa’s mom drops Ben off every day and he spends as much time as he can at the hospital. The accident seems to have really shaken him up.

But she’s finally released, so she takes Ben and they head home. 

The house feels…weird. Like there are pieces that just don’t make sense. Most of it seems familiar, home-y, sensible. But there’s DVDs on the rack that aren’t hers and aren’t Ben’s, covered in a thin lair of dust. There’s a _Car and Driver_  on the end table, almost a year old, and while Ben seems to like cars just fine–and where did that passion come from, she asks–she doesn’t think it’s his. There’s a bottle of Jack with only a few inches left, the cap screwed too tight, like it hasn’t been moved in a while. Lisa doesn’t drink whiskey, hasn’t since she had the baby.

She throws it all away. She lets it sit for a while, like eventually it will make sense, but then it just has to go. It’s unsettling, is what it is. So the whiskey and the magazine and the DVDs go into the trash, and soon enough she’s cleaned out the entire house, and it feels like it’s hers again.

Ben too seems unsettled. It’s like he wants someone that isn’t there, and Lisa tries to tell herself that this is just the teenage years. Ben wants a father, a male role model. That has to be all it is.

They go on as best they can. Until, that is, Lisa goes through old Facebook pictures one day.

She doesn’t use Facebook that often, but today is just that type of day, and there it is, in bold color, a picture of her and Ben and…some man she has no memory of. No, that’s wrong, she realizes. This is the guy who hit them in that accident. Blond hair and leather coat, freckles and a swagger. She frowns. 

She clicks through all the photos from that day, until she gets to one she’s tagged in that her neighbor from the last house took (she suddenly realizes she can’t remember why she left–was it so Ben could come to a better school? For work? What?) The neighbor helpfully captioned it. _Lisa, Ben, and Dean, adorable xoxoxo._

Lisa frowns. Dean. His name is Dean. He has this little smirk in some pictures. In some, he’s working the grill or drinking beer. One, he’s playing catch with Ben. One particularly jolting picture shows him pecking Lisa on the lips, a sweet moment preserved forever.

A sweet moment Lisa has no memory of, and how can she not remember the guy as anyone other than the guy who drove the other car that day?

Her first instinct is to call for Ben, make him look at these pictures, demand to know whatever he might. But she can’t bring her son into this craziness. She can’t upset this delicate world.

She tears through this house, going for the little-looked, hard to reach places, the places she didn’t hit with her cleaning. Photo albums come first. There’s pictures of Ben and Dean working on a car, or them playing ball. Dean has his arm around her and is smiling at her. 

It’s like her brain has gone numb, unable to really process all this. _How_  is this even possible? How does this guy exist? How doesn’t she remember a boyfriend, a live-in boyfriend, a whole life?

She doesn’t hear Ben walk up behind her until he asks, “who’s that?”

“Dean,” she says reflexively. “He’s Dean.”

And then it starts coming back to her, memories being pulled as if through a long tube, brought back from where they are vanished. “Oh, god,” she whispers, putting a hand over her mouth as if she might throw up.

Dean. Dean, the best weekend of her life, the maybe father of her son. Dean who showed up so shockingly so many years later. Dean who needed her, who became the father Ben needed and the boyfriend she loved. Dean who left.

Dean whose life almost got them killed. Dean, who apparently thought erasing their memories–somehow, however, whatever weird magic he surely had access to for that–was better than owning up to it and talking to them.

She tosses the photo album to the floor and runs for the bathroom, and she does throw up.

When she makes it out, Ben is holding the book and frowning, eyes angry. “How could he?” he asks.

She hugs her little boy close. “I don’t know,” she says. Then, “I’m sorry.” It’s woefully inadequate, and she didn’t do anything anyways, except maybe make the wrong choice of men to trust with Ben, but it’s the best she has.

She cuts down on the amount of yoga classes she teaches, citing needing to be around for Ben more. In reality, she’s using everything she remembers about finding a Winchester.

She tracks them down in Idaho. That first punch to the face is exactly as satisfying as she thought it would be.


End file.
